Task 41: A Holiday Task

On the back of such dazzling sonnets, you really are all at the top of your game. Six weeks away from writing, however, and you will just go rusty - so the purpose of this task is twofold: to keep your creativity alive over the summer break; and to give you a platform to show off to your moderators everything you can already do with prose fiction (as well as things you have never tried before!).

I really don't want to give you too many constraints with this task. After the rigidity of sonneteering, I want Task 41 to be much more of a blank canvas on which for you to let your creativity blossom. All I will do is a) give you a stimulus for your writing; and b) give you some suggestions about some creative decisions you might choose to make.

And the task?

To write a piece of prose fiction (between 300-400 words) inspired by one of the following photos.

By 'inspired by', I simply mean that you use the photo as a springboard (or starting point); where it takes you creatively is totally down to you and your muse...

All the photos have been taken from a brief and random surf on the 'Social Documentary' pool on flickr.com. DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY is basically a genre of photo which provides a (usually anonymous) snippet of the everyday life of an ordinary person. I don't think any of these photos are copyright-protected, which is why I am embedding them here; if I am wrong, then I apologise to the photographers concerned - but I am sure they will not mind their work inspiring the work of a bunch of teenage writers from East London anyway...

Photo 1


Photo 2


Photo 3


Photo 4


Photo 5


Photo 6


Photo 7


Photo 8


Photo 9


Photo 10

Once you have decided which photo you found most interesting or potentially profound, you will need to make a few decisions about how to write your piece. Here are some things to think about:

1. Form: Will it be the beginning of a short story (or novel)? Or a dramatic monologue?
2. Narrator: Will you go for 1st person (i.e. I/Me)? 3rd person (i.e. he/them etc.)? Or maybe even dare to dabble in the 2nd person (i.e. you)? Or even a mixture?
3. Tense: Will you write in the past tense? The present tense? The future tense even?
4. Narrative: Will you have multiple narratives running parallel to each other? Will the narrative move forward (or backwards) in a linear way?
5. Dialogue: Will you include some dialogue? If so, how will it be represented?
6. Description: How much detail will you give your reader regarding setting and scene? How much is essential and how much is superfluous?
   
7. Tension: Your reader will need a reason to keep reading - and to get to the end - but how will you achieve this?
8. Syntax: How will you experiment with your syntax (sentence structure)? Will you use long, compound/complex sentences? Short, simple sentences? Fragments, even? Or a mixture?
9. Vocabulary: What about the words you choose? Will they be long, complex and polysyllabic? Or short, simple and snappy? Words you have never used before, or common words used in a new way?
   
10. Imagery: How will you give your writing figurative richness (i.e. simile, metaphor and personification) without resorting to cliché?
11. Poetry: Lots of the best poetic techniques should not only be reserved for poetry. Think about the SOUND of your prose too: e.g. alliteration, rhythm, rhyme etc.
12. SHOW not TELL: How much will you be able to leave to your reader's imagination? And how much work do you need to do on their behalf? Suggestion usually works better than just 'telling'; but if you are too oblique and mysterious, you might just lose them.
    
13. Reader: What effect are you trying to have on your audience? How will you achieve this?
14. Start and Finish: Even if your piece is a smaller part of something much longer, you still need to think very carefully about how you BEGIN and END your piece (as these bits are, in many ways, the most important of all).
15. Photo: And how will you use the photo you chose? Perhaps it just gives you an idea or emotion that you then develop in a totally different and abstract direction? Perhaps it offers you a character you will then bring to life? Best of all, try out a number of things, and then take further the idea that seems to work the best...
    

I could go on forever. The point I am trying to make is that there are always choices to be made. And EVERY single word you write, every sentence, every paragraph - EVERYTHING should be the result of a creative DECISION. That is not to say that great writing can't flow, subconscious and instinct-driven; simply that, before submitting your final draft to the blog, you need to be confident that every single part of your piece is exactly how you want it to be.

The timescale for this task is longer than usual - but you MUST all meet the deadline, even if you need are going away on holiday and therefore need to be very strict with yourself whilst you are still at home. The deadline is midnight on Saturday 15th August.

Your moderators will then have the following fortnight in which to comment, in time for Task 42 at the very beginning of next term.

Finally, just in case any of you are a little stuck or confused about how to go about this DIFFICULT task, I will post my own exemplar over the next day or two. But please remember: it is only an exemplar, and, therefore, only one of the many different possible ways to attempt this task.

Good luck!

englishguru